21 Dollar Backgrounds

1940s Walter Lantz cartoons have the reputation of having pans over long, punny background drawings (a) to save money on animating a scene and (b) because writer Bugs Hardaway loved puns, generally eye-rollers.

Lantz’s main background artist during the decade was Fred Brunish, though he also employed Terry Lind (ex-Fleischer) and Phil De Guard (soon-to-be Warners). I don’t know if Brunish’s work is what you see in the war musical “21 Dollars a Day” but these three backgrounds open the cartoon. Camera work takes up the first 18 seconds of this Swing Symphony. The camera pans to the right of the final background to reveal the pun.